I am in mourning. I have felt denial, anger, depression–the whole seven steps of grief. Not because Christian rock is growing like a cancer. Or because the New Republic has slouched toward the right. No, my sorrow is because good old Sassy–that ultracool teen magazine that used to light up the newsstand with sarcastic articles like “Are You Obsessive-Compulsive? Are You? Are You? Are You? Are You? Are You?”–has been bought by dweebs. And the dweeb-run Sassy, out since March, just ain’t so–how to put it?–sassy.
With the junta at Sassy so weirdly in sync with the one in D.C., it’s easy to view the magazine’s fate as both a sorry outgrowth of the Republican revolution and a dark omen of more right-minded things to come. As several of my friends have pointed out, old Sassy staffers now pound the pavement much like Joycelyn Elders, while new Sassy publisher Jay Cole spouts Newtisms like “psychographics” and “alpha-teens.” But it’s just not enough to pose the question “Coincidence?” and answer, as the vernacular suggests, “Not!”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The middle years brought increasingly frequent (and costly) skirmishes between editorial and financial concerns. Under pressure from advertisers, money types forced Sassy writers to steer clear of the word “sex” for 24 issues–“at just the time we watched teens become the highest risk group for AIDS,” says former editor in chief Jane Pratt.
In thrashing such protocol Sassy earned big-time kudos and spawned a cultish following among influential lefty adults. Artsy types propped it on their coffee tables. Writer types wrote gushing reviews. Many claimed Sassy not only improved on the old teen-mag formula–wear these clothes, look this way, and you’ll get boys–but parodied that formula, replaced it, and arguably bettered the lot of a generation of readers. Take, for example, Peggy Orenstein, author of Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap, who’s spent years probing the problems of teenage girls. “I always tried to get the girls I worked with to read Sassy,” she says. “Hell, I read Sassy. Sassy was my hero.”
Hello cluephone? Jay, it’s for you.
